Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Episode 10 – Crystal Chronicles

Welp, seems Goku’s newfound mastery of Ultra Instinct wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

With Goku on the field, decked out in the Grand Priest’s gear and apparently able to switch his most powerful form on at a whim, the battle was all but over, right?

Right away, he flies up and stares down Hearts, before he can do anything to the sneering villain, he is rudely interrupted by Orin and Kamin. So he obviously decides to kick their asses instead, and as a display of Ultra Instinct combat; kind of underwhelming.

One of the coolest things about Ultra Instinct was how uniquely it made Goku move, everything about a fight when using the form seemed to have this unusual flowing form to it that was generally unlike any other thing seen in a Dragon Ball fight over the many years.

There are moments where it looks similar to either of the Jiren fights, but for the most part, it’s pretty generic stuff.

Speaking of Jiren; he is somehow not totally dominating Zamasu. Oh yeah, he’s immortal, I forgot about that. The whole immortality thing seemed to become a little more ambiguous after he fused with Goku Black. In fact, everything about Zamasu became a muddle at that point.

I’d be interested to see more, but their fight never really gets another look in throughout this episode though as we re-join the Tuffle Twins and Goku.

Finally sick of getting their shit wrecked, the pair fuse together to become a more androgynous looking version of the villain from Super Dragon Ball Heores World mission. The new being calling itself Kamioren, and seemingly has enough strength to not get destroyed by Ultra Instinct right away. Or maybe Goku is losing the form by the time this fusion happens. Oh, spoilers.

Not that we get an answer, because Hearts suddenly summons a new enemy; Lagss. While Kamioren and Cumber aren’t exactly super interesting villains. There’s something different about Lagss that intrigues me. Not a physical looking fighter, rather, she has the look of as young woman made of glass or smooth crystal.

And like Moro of the manga, it seems her abilities are based in magic rather than physical strength, which is a direction I continue to be in favour of in new Dragon Ball stories, as the ever ending ramping up of strength is getting to impossible plateaus.

We don’t get an impression of her overall strength though, because Goku’s new perfected form of Ultra Instinct apparently wasn’t so perfected after all, and it craps out on him. Just in time for Goku to get destroyed by Lagss’s crystal manipulation magic.

Meanwhile Vegeta goes Super Saiyan Blue Evolution, which is what I guess that form is called. and charges Kamioren. Ending the episode.

The previous hype of seeing Goku mastering Ultra Instinct really seemed to be a big fat red herring in the end, which seems like the smart move considering we don’t know the future plans for Ultra Instinct or if the lore masters behind the series ever want to make the form into something that can be surpassed, which should be impossible considering Whis’s description of the ability during Super.

While I am enjoying this arc much better than the first one, this episode has the hallmarks of being dragged out into another few episodes of the “Goku vs. Show”. This series is far more interesting when he wasn’t around.

This arc has been way less focused on the “What Ifs” that felt like they were the original basis for the card game, and more like it’s just trying to tell its own story in this weird, mash-up pocket universe. The series is certainly more interesting now than it was when it first kicked off, but at less than 10 minutes an episode, it’s always annoyingly lacking in enough week to week.